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Haiku Release 1 Alpha 4 Is Now Available

11-12-2012, 03:20 PM

Phoronix: Haiku Release 1 Alpha 4 Is Now Available

For those into the Haiku operating system, an open-source re-make of BeOS, the fourth alpha of its first release is now available. It's been nearly one and a half years since the Haiku Release 1 Alpha 3, so there's a lot of changes with this latest installment...

However it needs ALOT more work in order to be production ready. A better browser (port Firefox?), a better File manager, better mail app (port TB?) and so on. And the GUI needs to be refreshed. It looks like its from the 90s.

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Nice OS, I played with it all the time once in a while but wouldn't know how to do anything useful. Back in the 90's, when no one was so addicted to common DE's as today (with double click etc.), this was a real alternative.

//edit: with 90's I mean ~1995-1998, how do you name the decade?

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I was looking to try something different recently so I gave Alpha 3 a spin. I think it's a beautiful piece of work but I felt it ultimately wasn't for me. I'm a Gentoo user who likes to tinker and it clearly wasn't designed with me in mind. I'm keeping an eye on it purely out of interest but I decided to revisit my Amiga roots and try AROS instead.

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However it needs ALOT more work in order to be production ready. A better browser (port Firefox?), a better File manager, better mail app (port TB?) and so on. And the GUI needs to be refreshed. It looks like its from the 90s.

Yes I agree that the lack of a modern webbrowser is one of the really sore points as it's something that is the minimum new users expect. Webpositive has potential but it is currently much to featureless and also incompatible with lots of web services.

Not sure what you mean by better filemanager though?

As for the GUI, being a BEOS nostalgic I kind of like it but I guess that if I look at it objectively it's not exactly attractive by todays standards but I think it still wins some points on consistency and functionality.

Anyway once the package management is done I think Haiku will be of much more use as a day to day OS, of course the webbrowser remains a problem that also need to be fixed (most likely by a port of Chrome and/or Firefox as I doubt the webpositive devs have a prayer of a chance to keep up with the rapid browser development of today).